In recent years, mobile wireless communications have become increasingly popular. Initial implementations of mobile wireless communications, for example in the form of cellular telephone networks, supported circuit switched voice communication services. The carriers developed short message service (SMS) technology to provide text and/or e-mail communications via the wireless communication networks. As the public wireless communication networks have evolved to provide greater bandwidth and packet based services, the industry has developed a variety of data services, such as web browsing, as well as a variety of services using multimedia message service (MMS) technology.
Wireless packet data communication is being provided with ever increasing transmission speed. The packet data communication allows mobile device users to expand the scope of their use of the mobile device, for example, to enjoy multimedia services at a speed comparable to those enjoyed via Internet connected personal computers (PCs).
As the packet data communication has become prevalent, multiple forms of payment for networked data communication services have evolved. Multiple account options with varying amounts of data usage, call time, quality of service and bandwidth allowable are available as postpaid and prepaid communications services. Prepaid service, in which a customer or subscriber has fixed availability of usage of a voice or data resource, is becoming as popular as postpaid options.
User accounts supporting data services, alone or in addition to voice and messaging services, now encompass a vast majority of mobile wireless communications accounts. Prepaid accounts have limits set by the amounts of usage purchased by the users; however, even postpaid accounts may have significant usage thresholds, e.g., beyond which the users pay higher rates per usage. Using the example of a prepaid wireless service, the customer may purchase discrete blocks of time or amounts of data for making voice telephone calls or data communication via a cellular telephone network, and then purchases a new block or amount of data when the previously purchased block or amount is consumed. If additional data is not purchased at this point, service to the device is terminated. Alternatively, a customer may use a postpaid model in which a fixed fee is applied for using a certain amount of a resource within a certain time cycle (e.g., an amount of data or a number of minutes or messages within a month) and which, if used up, may entail a further fee for each use of further resources.
Upon connecting to the wireless communications network, the customer account is authorized and authenticated, and the network allows a voice or data call to proceed. For a prepaid account, the network monitors the customer's usage time or data and decrements from the customer's account. If the account becomes depleted or reaches billing cycle limits, the system can either prompt the customer to purchase more time or data, or the system can terminate the call. Another prepaid and postpaid plan option, however, enables the customer to budget an amount of airtime that will be used during a certain period of time, insuring that the budget will not be exceeded unless the customer desires more airtime. For example, a customer may opt to limit wireless communication airtime for specific phones in the plan (e.g., to prevent exceeding budgets allocated for their child). A similar plan may be offered for data communications, e.g. with a set limit on the amount of data.
In another aspect, since many recent packet data communication users are young users, parents of the young users may like to keep track of and control usage of packet data communications of their children. As a way to control usage of data communication by their children, the children/parents may want to be notified when the child has reached the subscription plan limit (which may be prepaid or postpaid).
To address these needs for people to receive notifications of reaching a subscription plan limit or other pre-set usage limit, some wireless communication service providers attempt to provide notifications of reaching the limit to the customers. The wireless communication service providers, however, do not provide immediate notice of reaching a subscription plan limit. Typically, the amount of use with respect to the subscription plan limit is checked after the end of each data communication session or each billing cycle. Further, these notifications typically rely on short message service (SMS) communication, which is not reliable. In this regard, SMS does not provide for feedback from the receiving mobile device to acknowledge receipt of the notification transmission. When the mobile device is turned OFF or is out of reach from signaling towers, the mobile device may never receive status notifications. Thus, even if a notification were sent from a billing server, it may not be successfully received by the mobile device.
Accordingly, when an account limitation is reached, the mobile device may not be aware that it no longer has data/voice access. Thus, the mobile device may continue pinging the network to request access, thereby causing significant overhead in terms of network and communication resources. Even if the mobile device may receive an account notification, there is currently no means from preventing applications of the mobile device from attempting to connect to the network. As mobile devices are becoming “smarter” by introducing an ever increasing amount of features which make use of the network, the network resource problem of blocking communication requests with the network is further exacerbated.